Milking the Tiger Snake

Fangs through a balloon, an orange balloonstretched over a jam-jar mouth scrubbed-upbush standard—fangs dripping what lookslike semen, which is venom, one of the mostdeadly, down grooves and splish splashonto the lens of the distorting glass-bottomboat we look up into, head of tigersnake pressed flat with the bushman’sthumb—his scungy hat that did Vietnam,a bandolier across his matted chestchocked with cartridges—pistoleerwho takes out ferals with secretivepatriotic agendas. And we kids watchhim draw the head of the fierce snake,its black body striped yellow. “It will rearup like a cobra if cornered, and attack,attack!” he stresses as another coupleof droplets form and plummet. And whenwe say, “Mum joked leave them aloneand they’ll go home,” he retorts, “Typicalbloody woman, first to moan if she’s bit,first to want a taste of the anti-venomthat comes of my rooting these blackbastards out, milking them dry, downto the last drop.” Tiger snake’s eyespeer out crazily targeting the neckof the old coot with his dirty mouth,its nicotine garland. He from whomwe learn, who shows us pornoand tells us what’s what. Or tiger snakeout of the wetlands, whip-crackedby the whip of itself until its back is broke.

Under the southern portion of the city exists its negative image: a network of more than two hundred miles of galleries, rooms, and chambers.

As the years passed, Tom grew more entrenched in his homelessness. He was absorbed in lofty fantasies and private missions, aware of the basest necessities and the most transcendent abstractions, and almost nothing in between.